Biography of Father Julian Cimaszkiewicz

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Born in 1890 in Bernishki, Vitebsk province. In 1915 he graduated from the law department of St. Petersburg University. Served in the management of the Polesska Railroad; from 1919 he worked at the People’s Commissariat of Communications in Moscow. He secretly prepared to become a priest, and on November 25, 1925, he was ordained by Bishop Anton Zerr in a German colony outside Odessa. From 1926 he served in Sts. Peter and Paul parish in Moscow, where he was arrested June 23, 1927, on charges of “anti-Soviet agitation and teaching religion to under-age children and minors.” November 18, 1927 – sentenced under Articles 58-6 and 122 of the Criminal Code of the of the RSFSR to eight years in corrective labor camp “without amnesty” [Special Board, OGPU Collegium]. Sent to Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp; transported to Butyrka Prison in Moscow in 1928 and released to Poland as part of a prisoner exchange. From 1930 he taught in Lublin Missionary Institute, founded by Archbishop Edward von Ropp; from 1936 he was administrator of the parish in Baturyn, Vilnius deanery; from 1938, in the parish in Vishnyeva, same deanery, and remained there after the annexation of Lithuania to the USSR. March 9, 1941 – arrested. June 26, 1941 – with the retreat of the Red Army, Fr. Julian was brutally tortured to death in the prison in Vileyka. Sources: Dzwonkowski, pp. 198-199; Madaƚa, p. 40; Osipova (1996), p. 209; list compiled by R. Dzwonkowski, SAC; Shkarovskii, p. 244